Reprieve for doctor who botched abortion
Mar 21, 2003, 12:46:00
A former Wordsley doctor who botched an abortion, leaving the patient needing life-saving surgery, has escaped being struck off the medical register.
The General Medical Council found consultant gynaecologist and obstetrician Andrew Gbinigie guilty of serious professional misconduct but ruled he could continue carrying out abortions subject to a series of conditions for three years.
The 47-year-old father-of-three, of Barnt Green, Birmingham, performed an abortion on a 21-year-old 20-week pregnant woman in November 2000 that was beyond his clinical competence and technical expertise, the committee ruled yesterday.
The doctor, who had denied the claim, had taken a job at Birmingham's private Calthorpe Clinic without revealing he had been suspended for sexually harassing two colleagues at his previous job at Wordsley Hospital, Stourbridge.
During the abortion at Calthorpe, Gbinigie ruptured the patient's uterus wall and removed her right ovary and fallopian tube.
It was only after he pulled out a piece of her bowel that he realised something was wrong and called for help from senior staff.
The woman had to be rushed to Birmingham Women's Hospital for life-saving surgery.
Committee chairman Barbara Grant-Braham told Gbinigie that he had been involved in a "significant breach" of the principles of good medical practice.
But she said the abortion did not represent a pattern of incompetent surgery.
Gbinigie can continue to carry out abortions, either in private clinics or the NHS, but only at sites which have immediate access to intensive care units and surgical experts, the committee ruled.
Provided this condition is met he can carry out terminations on anyone who is less than 12 weeks pregnant without supervision.
With training, education and supervised surgical practice and assessment he can one day return to carrying out the more complicated abortions on women who are more than 12 weeks pregnant, the committee said.
